General Mattis did not, so far as I can tell, challenge this policy. He was an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic when he led Centcom, but he was opposed to Trump’s rejection of the nuclear deal, and never, so far as I can tell, called for American support of the ongoing uprising of the Iranian people against the regime.

It should be obvious that an effective Syria policy must include defeating Iran — Syria, and also Lebanon, are run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards — and I was dismayed and surprised that Mattis’ resignation letter did not deal with Iran. I am afraid this means that Mattis agrees with Trump that we should not challenge Tehran. Like the president, Mattis seems to favor some sort of deal. So while I am impressed by the dignity and coherence of his resignation, I am not impressed with his policy views, any more than I was when he called John Kerry “valiant” in a public conversation with a CNN talking head at the Aspen Institute.

Nor do I admire Mattis’ — and Trump’s, and Pompeo’s, and most of the pundits’ and journalists’ — failure to see the world for what it is. How often have you heard warnings that the withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan will make war more likely? They don’t seem to realize that the war is on, right here and now. Nor do they see that it’s a global war, and that we face a coalition of radical Islamist and radical Leftist regimes, from China and North Korea and Cuba to Russia, Iran, Turkey and Venezuela. Our enemies, who fear and despise freedom, are well aware that this is a big war. Listen to the Taliban, as quoted by my fine colleagues Bill Roggio and Tom Joscelyn:

For years, the Taliban and al Qaeda have told their followers that victory is on the horizon. “Verily, Allah has promised us victory and America has promised us defeat, so we shall see which of the two promises will be fulfilled,” Mullah Omar has been quoted as saying.

Such is the importance that Osama bin Laden’s successor has placed on the Afghan jihad. Similarly, the leader of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), Asim Umar, predicted in 2017 that Trump’s “America First” policy meant that America would retreat from Afghanistan, thereby signaling the loss of its global leadership position.

Sound of loud explosions reported in Damascus ■ Iranian and Hezbollah arms depots reportedly targeted ■ Incident comes days after Netanyahu said may expand military action after U.S. pullout from Syria

The Israeli military spokesman said shortly after that an anti-aircraft missile fired from Syria was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems.

Residents in the area of northern city of Hadera, south of Haifa on the Mediterranean coast, reported seeing a trail in the sky, and residents of Hefer Valley Regional Council, between Netanya and Hadera, reported hearing a loud explosion.

The sound of loud explosions also echoed through Syrian capital city of Damascus, a witness told DPA.

Syrian air defense activity near Damascus, December 25, 2018. SANA

Residents in the area also said that explosions took place around the Al Mezzeh Military Airport west of the capital, reportedly targeted by Israel before, and in the areas of Kesawa and Jimraya, which are located north-west of Damascus.

The residents added that there were at least two rounds of strikes in Kesawa and Jimraya.

Lebanese residents near the border with neighbouring Syria said the sound of planes could be heard in the sky, hinting that Israeli planes were using Lebanese airspace to hit targets inside Syria.

Lebanese state-run National News Agency said Israeli war planes performed mock raids above southern Lebanon, and other media outlets reported that residents near the border with neighboring Syria said the sound of planes could be heard in the sky.

“The decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria will not change our consistent policy: We will continue to act against Iran’s attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria, and to the extent necessary, we will even expand our actions there,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

Also on Sunday, the Israeli army said soldiers fired toward several gunmen approaching Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights. No Israeli forces were wounded and it is unclear whether the gunmen were hit.

The decision was followed on Thursday by the surprise departure of U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who in a resignation letter to Trump laid bare the growing divide between the two over foreign policy.

“I would like to reassure those who are concerned. Our cooperation with the U.S. will continue in full and finds expression in many areas: Operations, intelligence and many other security spheres,” Netanyahu said.

Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot also commented on Trump’s decision Sunday, saying it is “significant,” but should not be overblown.

“The Russian presence in Syria since the end of 2015 created a new situation,” Eisenkot told a conference at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

“It required us to enter a dialogue to create a system to prevent friction, and it has been a factor affecting how we have used force. Through the entire period, I as chief of staff have felt that there has been an understanding regarding Israel’s security needs.”

Although Russia and Israel established a system to avoid friction between Israeli aircraft operating in Syria and Russian military planes in the area, a Russian aircraft was downed by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles during an Israeli airstrike in September. The Russians blamed Israel for the mishaps, a claim that Israel vigorously denied.

A former head of military intelligence said in November that Israeli strikes on Syria “have been cut almost to zero” since the Russian plane was shot down. Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, interviewed on Radio 103, said Iran was “changing tactics” and has been reducing its presence in Syria in favor of Iraq and Lebanon.

“Apart from the Russians’ anger with us, I assume they also passed stern messages to the Iranians,” he said. “Russia’s strategy is to stabilize Syria, and Iran was disrupting that by developing its precision missile facilities.”

Russia announced it had delivered the S-300 air defense system to Syria in October. That came after the September 17 downing of a Russian reconnaissance plane by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli airstrike, a friendly fire incident that stoked regional tensions.

Reuel Marc Gerecht Senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Mark Dubowitz Chief executive officer for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

During the presidential campaign, the outlier in Donald Trump’s foreign-policy orations was his treatment of Iran. On Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia (remember President Barack Obama’s “off-mic” tête-à-tête with President Dmitry Medvedev?), and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump largely followed his predecessor. Differences existed, certainly in style and manner, but the overlap between the two men on most of the big foreign-policy questions was profound.

When it came to the clerical regime in Iran, however, the two men were polar opposites. Trump thought the nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was “the worst deal ever.” He also let loose against Tehran’s Islamic radicalism, terrorism, quest for regional hegemony, and fondness for sowing mayhem in the Middle East. Trump’s serrated rhetoric stood in contrast to the comments of Obama, his secretary of state, and other senior officials, who had muted their criticisms of Tehran in their pursuit of the atomic accord and, as important, a new strategic realignment, wherein a less interventionist America might, so the theory went, find a modus vivendi with a richer, commercially engaged, and moderating Islamic Republic.

As president, Trump followed through. The nuclear deal went down, the sanctions came back, and despite moments of wobbliness concerning troop deployments in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Trump administration held fast in the Middle East. National-Security Advisers H. R. McMaster and John Bolton, United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and, perhaps most of all, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a new approach to the Islamic Republic. The Trump administration wasn’t inclined to roll back the clerical regime, but it did seem ready to contest and contain Iran’s Shiite imperialism in Syria, Yemen, and even in Iraq, in which the president had never evinced much interest.

Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, concurrently with his intention to drastically reduce the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan and the likely soon-to-be-announced further drawdown of U.S. personnel in Iraq, has made mincemeat of the administration’s efforts to contain Iran. If you add up who wins locally by this decision (the clerical regime in Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite radicals, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) and who loses (Jordan, Israel, the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arabs, everyone in Lebanon resisting Hezbollah, the vast majority of the Iraqi Shia, the Gulf States), it becomes clear that the interests of the United States have been routed.

Before Trump pulled the plug in Syria, the rhetorical center of the president’s Iran policy was the “New Iran Strategy” speech by Pompeo at the Heritage Foundation on May 21, 2018. The 12 demands that Pompeo issued to Tehran are not historically provocative—they were, until the coming of Obama, essentially what the United States had always sought: to deny the mullahs nuclear weapons and stop them from spreading their version of Islamic militancy. Washington hadn’t been brilliantly successful in countering Tehran and only occasionally efficient in bringing real pain to the mullahs and their praetorians, the Revolutionary Guards, who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers since they first drew blood in Lebanon in 1983. But Pompeo, by redrawing the lines, clearly signaled that the United States wasn’t giving up, that a campaign of “maximum pressure” was still coming. It is clear now, however, that the secretary’s speech was a bridge too far for Trump, who may never have read it.

To be fair to the president: The administration’s developing approach was probably never his. A close read of Pompeo’s Heritage speech reveals the tactical quandary that has always been at the core of the Trump presidency’s approach. The secretary put forth a lot of “don’ts” for the regime: “Iran must end support to Middle Eastern terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad … respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government … end its military support for the Houthi militia [in Yemen] … must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria … end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan … cease harboring senior al-Qaeda leaders … and end its threatening behavior against its neighbors.” But he did not clearly indicate that the United States would do anything to punish the Islamic Republic for its malign actions other than use sanctions.

It is an excellent guess that Pompeo, Bolton, McMaster, and Haley were willing to apply more pressure than just sanctions, and would have given speeches to that effect if they’d been allowed to do so. Even Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who was more reticent about committing U.S. troops to an anti-Iran mission, would have likely been more forward-leaning if he had trusted Trump to stay the course in Syria and Iraq. All these officials certainly agreed that U.S. forces in Syria, which don’t cost much and have incurred few casualties, should stay. Those troops and civilians were the hinge of long-term Iranian containment—a low-cost use of American soldiers, backed up by allied European special-operations units, that had checked the advance of much larger and more costly Iranian, Russian, and Syrian-regime forces.

To their credit, Pompeo, Bolton, McMaster, Haley, and Mattis removed the rhetorical legerdemain surrounding the reasons for American troops being in Syria: They were there to squash the Islamic State and prevent its rebirth, and they were there to check Russia and Iran, which controls Syrian-regime ground forces as well as the indispensable foreign Shiite militias. This American engagement was easily the best bang for the buck that Washington had gotten in the region since 2001.

Nor were Bolton, McMaster, Pompeo, Haley, and Mattis operating outside congressional authorization: At any time, Congress could have cut off funding for U.S. forces if it thought they were straying too far from their original mandate. Congress didn’t do so. Syria may be the one locale where congressional Democrats and Republicans largely agreed about the use of American military power. And if the president were ever serious about rebuilding a transatlantic alliance against the Islamic Republic, Syria was the place to do it.

But Trump just couldn’t buy in. It’s ironic that the president snapped when discussing Syria with Turkey’s President Erdoğan, who is modern Turkey’s first real Islamist ruler and certainly not a friend of the United States. The president’s tweets are a muddle: At one moment, he thinks the Islamic State is destroyed, and therefore our soldiers can come home; at another, he suggests that ending the Islamic State isn’t even America’s business because the group is aligned against the Syrian regime, Iran, and Russia. (“Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying & killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran & other locals?”) All one can conclude is that the president just wants out of Syria, regardless of the consequences. Even more than Obama, Trump is post-post-9/11.

Which leaves the administration’s Iran policy centered on sanctions. Sanctions have many things going for them as a foreign-policy tool. Against Iran, they eliminated the surreality under Obama of the United States returning money that could be used to support the clerics’ imperialism for, at best, a short-term surcease to our nuclear anxieties. Tehran now has tens of billions less in hard currency to further its ambitions than it did when Trump took office. And Trump was right: Iranian aggression abroad got much worse after the nuclear deal was concluded.

But sanctions aren’t strategy. If they encourage Americans to stop thinking about the other factors required to counter the Islamic Republic, they become a delusion, an appealing, inexpensive choice for those not quite ready to admit they no longer have the intestinal fortitude to play hardball in the Middle East. Without the complementary use of other instruments of national power, they serve the same purpose that nuclear diplomacy and the JCPOA did for Obama: They are cover for our continuing retreat.

When Trump won the presidential election, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, speculated on the potential upside of his victory: Trump might actually follow through on what he’d preached—an American withdrawal from the Middle East. Surrounded by Bolton, Pompeo, and Mattis, Trump’s promise seemed to dim. But Khamenei, who is the most accomplished dictator in modern Middle Eastern history, in part because he can see and exploit the weaknesses and strengths in both his enemies and friends, appears again to have seen his adversary correctly: Trump’s desire to be done with the Muslim Middle East (and so much else) is deep.

And unlike the Iranian cleric, who imbibed radical European literature and melded it to the revolutionary Islamist ethos of his heroes, Sayyid Qutb and Ruhollah Khomeini, Trump has no grand vision. He has the sense of a populist politician who knows America will, without leaders arguing otherwise, always go with less, not more, in foreign affairs. Trump has gutted and left powerless his senior officials, who have tried hard to give some coherence and mundane effect to his waves of emotion and disconnected data points. It’s hard to think of a time when an American president has so publicly stripped his most senior advisers of their credibility.

Although Khamenei didn’t say so, it’s a good guess that if given the choice between dealing with American sanctions or America staying in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, he’d take the former. Trump’s withdrawal has severely weakened his own Iran policy, signaling boredom, fickleness, fatigue, and fear. He’s weakened American allies in the region and probably obliged the Kurds who fought with us in Syria to seek protection from Iran and Russia. The great Iranian-American tug-of-war, which has defined so much of Khamenei’s life, may well be over. It is odd and wry that many Americans, on the right and left, may believe that what is good for Khamenei could possibly be good for the United States, too.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Iran missile tests breach no UNSC resolution says a Press TV expert as it announces plan to increase its military range. The announcement is being considered as a show of defiance against the US which has branded the country as a security threat.

The extraordinary claims were made in a paper composed by the official Iranian Resistance movement. The document asserts numerous Iranian officials have travelled to North Korea to discuss nuclear weapons. It comes after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attacked Iran for violation of United Nations (UN) resolutions this week.

In exchange for obtaining military, nuclear and missile equipment, the Iranian regime sends oil to North Korea, the explosive paper claims.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) document, many Iranian officials have been in clandestine talks with Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship over nuclear weapons policy.

Missile and nuclear experts from North Korea have had a consistent presence in Iran since the Iran-Iraq war, the NCRI paper states.

The document, entitled ‘Iran’s Ballistic Buildup: The march towards nuclear-capable missiles’, purports to know the “exact location of the place where North Koreans stay”, contending it is: “End of Babaie Highway heading to the east, past Morvarid Hall, at Khomeini complex.”

It also mentions specific individuals whom it claims are involved.

According to compiled reports, IRGC delegates and commanders regularly visit North Korea, with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh allegedly present during the third nuclear test conducted by North Korea on February 12, 2013.

In the valleys between Damascus and Lebanon, where whole communities had abandoned their lives to war, a change is taking place. For the first time since the conflict broke out, people are starting to return.

But the people settling in are not the same as those who fled during the past six years.

The population swaps are central to a plan to make demographic changes to parts of Syria, realigning the country into zones of influence that backers of Bashar al-Assad, led by Iran, can directly control and use to advance broader interests. Iran is stepping up its efforts as the heat of the conflict starts to dissipate and is pursuing a very different vision to Russia, Assad’s other main backer.

Russia, in an alliance with Turkey, is using a nominal ceasefire to push for a political consensus between the Assad regime and the exiled opposition. Iran, meanwhile, has begun to move on a project that will fundamentally alter the social landscape of Syria, as well as reinforcing the Hezbollah stronghold of north-eastern Lebanon, and consolidating its influence from Tehran to Israel’s northern border.

Key for Iran are the rebel-held towns of Zabadani and Madaya, where Damascus residents took summer breaks before the war. Since mid-2015 their fate has been the subject of prolonged negotiations between senior Iranian officials and members of Ahrar al-Sham, the dominant anti-Assad opposition group in the area and one of the most powerful in Syria.

Talks in Istanbul have centred on a swap of residents from two Shia villages west of Aleppo, Fua and Kefraya, which have both been bitterly contested over the past three years. Opposition groups, among them jihadis, had besieged both villages throughout the siege of Aleppo, attempting to tie their fate to the formerly rebel-held eastern half of the city.

The swap, according to its architects, was to be a litmus test for more extensive population shifts, along the southern approaches to Damascus and in the Alawite heartland of Syria’s north-west, from where Assad draws much of his support.

Labib al-Nahas, the chief of foreign relations for Ahrar al-Sham, who led negotiations in Istanbul, said Tehran was seeking to create areas it could control. “Iran was very ready to make a full swap between the north and south. They wanted a geographical continuation into Lebanon. Full sectarian segregation is at the heart of the Iranian project in Syria. They are looking for geographical zones that they can fully dominate and influence. This will have repercussions on the entire region.

“[The sieges of] Madaya and Zabadani became the key issue to prevent the opposition from retaking Fua and Kefraya, which have exclusive populations of Shia. Hezbollah consider this a security zone and a natural extension of their territory in Lebanon. They have had very direct orders from the spiritual leadership of Iran to protect them at any cost.”

Iran has been especially active around all four towns through its Hezbollah proxies. Along the ridgelines between Lebanon’s Bekaa valley and into the outskirts of Damascus, Hezbollah has been a dominant presence, laying siege to Madaya and Zabadani and reinforcing the Syrian capital. Wadi Barada to the north-west, where ongoing fighting is in breach of the Russian-brokered ceasefire, is also part of the calculations, sources within the Lebanon-based movement have confirmed.

Elsewhere in Syria, demographic swaps are also reshaping the geopolitical fabric of communities that, before the war, had coexisted for centuries. In Darayya, south-west of Damascus, more than 300 Iraqi Shia families moved into neighbourhoods abandoned by rebels last August as part of a surrender deal. Up to 700 rebel fighters were relocated to Idlib province and state media announced within days that the Iraqis had arrived.

Shia shrines in Darayya and Damascus have been a raison d’etre for the presence of Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Shia groups. The Sayeda Zainab mosque on the capital’s western approach has been heavily fortified by Hezbollah and populated by families of the militant group, who have moved in since late 2012. Tehran has also bought large numbers of homes near the Zainab mosque, and a tract of land, which it is using to create a security buffer – a microcosm of its grander project.

Abu Mazen Darkoush, a former FSA commander who fled Zabadani for Wadi Barada said Damascus’s largest Islamic shrine, the Umayyad mosque, was now also a security zone controlled by Iranian proxies. “There are many Shia who were brought into the area around the mosque. It is a Sunni area but they plan for it to be secured by Shias, then surrounded by them.”

Senior officials in neighbouring Lebanon have been monitoring what they believe has been a systematic torching of Land Registry offices in areas of Syria recaptured on behalf of the regime. A lack of records make it difficult for residents to prove home ownership. Offices are confirmed to have been burned in Zabadani, Darayya, Syria’s fourth city, Homs, and Qusayr on the Lebanese border, which was seized by Hezbollah in early 2013.

Darkoush said whole neighbourhoods had been cleansed of their original inhabitants in Homs, and that many residents had been denied permission to return to their homes, with officials citing lack of proof that they had indeed lived there.

In Zabadani, Amir Berhan, director of the town’s hospital, said: “The displacement from here started in 2012 but increased dramatically in 2015. Now most of our people have already been taken to Idlib. There is a clear and obvious plan to move Sunnis from between Damascus and Homs. They have burned their homes and fields. They are telling people ‘this place is not for you anymore’.

“This is leading to the fragmentation of families. The concept of family life and ties to the land is being dissolved by all this deportation and exile. It is shredding Syrian society.”

At stake in postwar Syria, with the war beginning to ebb, is more than who lives where when the fighting finally stops. A sense of identity is also up for grabs, as is the bigger question of who gets to define the national character.

“This is not just altering the demographic balance,” said Labib al-Nahas. “This is altering the balance of influence in all of these areas and across Syria itself. Whole communities will be vulnerable. War with Iran is becoming an identity war. They want a country in their likeness, serving their interests. The region can’t tolerate that.”

BEIRUT —One of the biggest winners of President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria will be Iran, which can now expand its reach across the Middle East with Washington’s already waning influence taking another hit.

The abrupt reversal of U.S. policy regarding its small military presence in a remote but strategically significant corner of northeastern Syria has stunned U.S. allies, many of whom were counting on the Trump administration’s seemingly tough posture on Iran to reverse extensive gains made by Tehran in recent years.

“The Americans have come to the conclusion that they can exercise power neither in Iraq and Syria nor in the entire region,” said Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of ground forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, at a news conference in Tehran.

The area in northeastern Syria where most of an estimated 2,000 U.S. troops are based is now up for grabs, with both Turkey and the Syrian government vying for control.

The Syrian Kurds, who manage the area, say they are hoping to reach a deal with Assad, which would head off a feared Turkish incursion — and bring the Iranian-allied government into areas overseen by the U.S. military.

Of more immediate concern to Israel is a much smaller toehold the U.S. military has maintained at Tanf, a tiny territory in Syria along the border of Iraq and Jordan.

The Trump administration has not said whether the withdrawal plan includes Tanf, where around 250 U.S. Special Forces are based alongside a Pentagon-trained unit of former Free Syrian Army rebels.

The rebel commander, Muhannad al-Talla, said the rebels had been told to prepare for a U.S. pullout, although they were not given a date.

The U.S. base is located at the border crossing between Iraq and Syria, along the shortest link between Tehran and the Syrian capital of Damascus, a route Iran could use to sustain the growing arsenal of missiles and rockets that its ally Hezbollah is building in Lebanon.

The unilateral decision to withdraw, without a plan for what comes next, has called into question the Israeli assumption that it can count on the United States to protect Israel against Iran, Israeli analysts said.

Iran is already close to restoring another land route across Iraq through Syria and into Lebanon via the Iraqi-Syrian border crossing linking the Syrian town of Bukamal and the Iraqi town of Qaim. This location is a crossroads of geopolitical conflict where the forces of the Islamic State, the Syrian government, Iranian-backed militias, Russia, the United States and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are battling for control.

With the United States withdrawing its troops from the Syrian side of the border, Israel is concerned about whether it will also pull out from Iraq, where around 5,200 U.S. troops are based and mostly provide training and advice to the Iraqi Army, said Brig. Gen. Eli Ben Meir, who formerly headed the Israeli military’s research analysis division. The United States maintains a base just across the border from Bukamal, in Qaim, which will continue to act as a deterrent to Iran’s unfettered access to the area after troops leave Syria, while the U.S. presence in Iraq more broadly exerts some restraint on Iran’s ability to exercise full control.

“The most important thing from Israel’s aspect and Israeli strategy is how the U.S. military existence in Iraq, and especially on the Iraqi-Syrian border, will reshape, if at all, because of this withdrawal,” Meir said in a conference call with journalists in Israel. “Iran wants to be more involved in what’s going on in Syria, but there is Iraq that is between.”

The decision to withdraw from Syria on the grounds that the Islamic State has been defeated, as Trump claimed, is also likely to bolster demands from Iran’s Shiite Iraqi allies for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, said Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s former foreign minister. He predicted an intensified effort in the Iraqi parliament, where Iran-backed militia groups control at least a third of its seats and could count on support from others opposed to the U.S. presence to push for a U.S. withdrawal.

“The logic is that if the U.S. has defeated ISIS in Syria and is withdrawing, ISIS is defeated in Iraq and they should also withdraw from Iraq,” he said.

Morris reported from Jerusalem. Zakaria Zakaria in Brazil contributed to this report.

Liz Sly is The Washington Post’s Beirut bureau chief, covering Lebanon, Syria and the wider region. She has spent more than 17 years covering the Middle East, including the first and second Iraq wars. Other postings include Washington, Africa, China, Afghanistan and Italy.

Loveday Morris is The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. She was previously based in Baghdad and Beirut for The Post.

The long absence of a carrier, however, could become a standard practice here as now-outgoing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought to shake up naval operations and American air bases spanning the region can scramble fighter jets and drones.

“We are trying to be more operationally unpredictable,” said Lt. Chloe Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S.’ Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. “Now we’re switching it up because our adversaries are watching closely. We want to be operationally unpredictable to our enemies, but strategically predictable to our partners.”

The Navy invited journalists to ride on the nuclear-powered Stennis, whose homeport is Bremerton, Washington, as it transited the Strait of Hormuz. The strait at its narrowest point is 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide, in the waters between Iran and Oman.

Despite being so narrow and within the territorial waters of those two nations, the strait is viewed as an international transit route. American forces routinely travel through the area, despite sometimes tense encounters with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For Iran’s part, they compare the American presence to Tehran sending warships to the Gulf of Mexico.

However, the 5th Fleet says it has not seen any “unsafe and unprofessional” actions by Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf since August 2017 before the Stennis’ transit through the strait.

Throughout its trip Friday, some 30 Iranian Revolution Guard vessels trailed the Stennis and its strike group. One small vessel launched what appeared to be a commercial-grade drone to film the American ships. Photographers and videographers on the Iranian boats could clearly be seen also filming the Stennis while journalists on board the aircraft carrier filmed them.

“The Iranian craft drove in front of our ship and stopped . and tried to capture their own sort of picture of what was going on,” said Capt. Randy Peck, the commanding officer of the Stennis.

There was no immediate mention of the Stennis’ arrival to the Persian Gulf in Iranian state media.

The long gap between carrier deployments in the Persian Gulf represents a change in U.S. military strategy dating back to the first Gulf War in 1991 and the overflights of Iraq that followed for years after. Mattis, as the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, himself demanded two carrier groups in the Persian Gulf as he led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since then, Mattis has said he wants a more unpredictable Navy to respond to Russia and China, which he sees as the “great power competition” America now faces.

“The way you do this is we ensure that preparation for great power competition drives not simply a rotation schedule that allows me to tell you, three years from now, which aircraft carrier will be where,” Mattis told a U.S. House committee in April. “That’s a great way to run a shipping line. It’s no way to run a Navy.”

The U.S. military also operates air bases in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as a major Army base in Kuwait and its Navy base in Bahrain. That offers the American military a variety of locations both in the Persian Gulf, as well as other bases in the wider Mideast, to launch strikes.

“Carriers were needed to support many of the initial strikes in Afghanistan in 2001, some attacks in Iraq in 2003, and most tactical missions in Syria in 2011,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “After access to adequate ground bases was obtained for today’s operations in Syria and Iraq, carrier-based aircraft were not as essential for these missions.”

“The U.S. does not need carriers in the Persian Gulf,” he added.

As military operations wind down in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, that likely will mean less need for airstrikes as well. However, the 5th Fleet still maintains a fleet of 21 ships from Bahrain and other Navy ships will continue to transit the strait.

“The American Navy is showing they’re committed to regional stability all across the globe but particularly in the Gulf region,” Peck said. “It’s a very economically important area for the entire world, so we’re going to continue to go wherever we can internationally, in international waters.”

The Pentagon said it was transitioning to the “next phase of the campaign” but did not give details.

Some 2,000 troops have helped rid much of north-eastern Syria of IS, but pockets of fighters remain.

It had been thought defence officials wanted to maintain a US presence to ensure IS did not rebuild.

There are also fears a US withdrawal will cede influence in Syria and the wider region to Russia and Iran.

Both the Pentagon and the White House statement said the US had started “returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign”.

The Pentagon said it would not provide further details of what that next phase is “for force protection and operational security reasons”.

The White House said the US and its allies stood “ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary, and we will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support and any means of infiltrating our borders”.

President Trump said it was time to bring troops home after their historic victory

What has been the reaction?

Israel said it had been told the US had “other ways to have influence in the area” but would “study the timeline [of the withdrawal], how it will be done and of course the implications for us”.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on state-controlled Channel One TV that the US decision could result in “genuine, real prospects for a political settlement” in Syria.

Pulling troops out of Syria had long been promised by President Trump.

But the announcement may have taken some of his own officials by surprise.

Last week Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat IS, told reporters at the state department: “Nobody is saying that [IS fighters] are going to disappear. Nobody is that naive. So we want to stay on the ground and make sure that stability can be maintained in these areas.”

The state department abruptly cancelled Wednesday’s daily briefing after the withdrawal was announced.

One of Mr Trump’s supporters, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the armed services committee, called it a “huge Obama-like mistake”.

Turkey this week said it was preparing to launch an operation against a Kurdish militia in northern Syria, which has been an ally of the US in its fight against IS.

A UK government spokesman said these developments “do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign” against IS, and the UK will “remain committed” to ensure IS’ “enduring defeat”.

“Much remains to be done and we must not lose sight of the threat they pose,” the UK statement said.

“As the situation on the ground develops, we will continue to discuss how we achieve these aims with our Coalition partners, including the US.”

Chaotic US policy?

Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent

President Trump’s decision reverses the official lines of both the Pentagon and the State Department and it places Washington’s Kurdish allies in greater jeopardy.

US ground operations in north-eastern Syria involve some 2,000 troops, maybe more, and a network of bases and air strips has been established. But to what strategic end?

IS is well on the way to being defeated. Syria’s President Assad remains in place. If the goal now is to contain Iran or Russia’s rising influence in the region then 2,000 troops strung out across a vast swathe of territory may be too small a force to do this.

Their presence though does give the US “skin in the game”. And many will see this decision as yet another indication of the chaos and uncertainty surrounding US policy towards this crucial region.

What is the US presence?

US troops have largely been stationed in the Kurdish region in northern Syria.

A partnership with an alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, is credited with playing a major role in the virtual elimination of IS after it overran large swathes of Syria four years ago, imposing brutal rule on almost eight million people in the country and neighbouring Iraq.

However, the militant group has not disappeared entirely. A recent US report said there were still as many as 14,000 IS militants in Syria and even more in neighbouring Iraq – and there is a fear they will shift to guerrilla tactics in an attempt to rebuild their network.

But the partnership between the US and the Kurds has enraged neighbouring Turkey, which views the Kurdish YPG militia – the main fighting force in the SDF – as an extension of a banned Kurdish group fighting for autonomy in Turkey.

On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country might soon start a new military operation against the YPG in Syria.

Mr Erdogan added that he had discussed his plan with Mr Trump by telephone and that he had given a “positive response”.

The US announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to sell $3.5bn in missiles to Turkey to “increase the defensive capabilities of the Turkey military to guard against hostile aggression and shield Nato allies who might train and operate within Turkey’s borders”.

Russia said on Wednesday it would continue with its own sale of an advanced missile defence system to Turkey.

In addition to the northern deployment, US forces are also helping fight IS in the last pocket of territory it controls in the south-east of the country.

The midterm congressional elections and the polarized politics of America are sparking their own debate within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many of the regime’s hardliners have come to the conclusion that the Trump administration will be weaker in the next two years and thus it is time for a more confrontational policy. President Hassan Rouhani and his battered centrists are also looking at American politics, but instead of an immediate conflict they want to wait out the Trump storm and deal with a more accommodating Democratic president that may come to power in 2020. The ultimate arbiter of this debate is leader Ali Khamenei, who seems to be edging toward his hardline disciples.

By this time, Rouhani must appreciate that the Europeans are unlikely to shield Iran from the sanctions imposed by Trump after he abrogated the Iran deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Commerce and politics have parted ways, as businessmen are less responsive to the pleas of European diplomats for trade with Iran that could cost them access to the American market. Still, for Rouhani, talks with Europe and adherence to the JCPOA is about making an impression on a Democratic Party eager for an Iranian interlocutor should it recapture the White House in two years. Rouhani’s diplomatic gambit is less about Europe than America’s progressives.

The latest chorus of denunciation of Rouhani was led by his vanquished opponent in the last presidential election, Ibrahim Raisi, who insisted, “If we are restrained, our enemies will not retreat. We must be more of activists.” Revolutionary Guards Gen. Amir Ali Jadeh-Zahdi dismissed negotiations and insisted that “the strategies of Europe and America are the same and in between them they have crafted a division of labor.” He ended his speech by exclaiming, “If we don’t fight the Islamic State in the towns of Syria and Iraq, this virus will surely migrate to Iran and we have to fight it Hamadan and Kermanshah and Tabriz.” Said Jalili, the former lead nuclear negotiator, has similarly castigated Rouhani as a naive politician who believes that “preserving the JCPOA is good for Iran’s pocket book.”

For Jalili and many hardliners, it is time to dispense with the JCPOA and forge full speed ahead.

Ali Khamenei seldom takes on America unless he perceives that its vulnerabilities preclude an effective response. He did not assail President George W. Bush’s enterprise in Iraq until he was sure that America was too mired in a sectarian civil war to address his misdeeds. It was then that his Revolutionary Guards lacerated the American troops. He did not concede to an arms control agreement with President Barack Obama’s administration until he calculated that Washington was desperate for an accord and would make the necessary concessions.

At the beginning of the Trump administration, Khamenei seemed unsettled by the new president and his provocations. The leader insisted, “There will be no war; nor will we negotiate with the U.S.” Thus, Khamenei conceded to Rouhani’s strategy of trying to fracture the Western alliance and protect Iran from American retribution by cozying up to Europe.

Now, he sees another American president struggling to regain his footing, facing domestic headwinds, and the onset of a presidential campaign season that always produces policy paralysis in Washington. Khamenei recently assured his military officers that as a result of unity and “effective presence of the armed forces in the field — the shadow of intimation and threats will also go away from the Iranian nation.” Today, Khamenei’s instincts are drawing him closer to his hawkish disciples who see in America’s domestic troubles an opportunity to reclaim more of the region, a leader who views enmity toward America as essential to the vitality of the revolution is clearly being swayed by the arguments of those he most trusts.

During its first two years, the Trump administration had the luxury of engaging in a series of steps such as abrogating the Iran deal and re-imposing costly sanctions without a measurable Iranian response. That retaliation may soon be coming, as the Islamic Republic seeks to further entrench its presence in Syria, turn Lebanon into a front-line state against Israel, and press Iraq’s politics to its advantage. Indeed, Khamenei may even authorize resumption of aspects of the nuclear program.

The Iranian hardliners are betting that America will do nothing. How the Trump administration responds to this Iranian move will go far in determining the success of its Middle East policy.

The extraordinary claims were made in a paper composed by the official Iranian

Resistance movement. The document asserts numerous Iranian officials have travelled to North Korea to discuss nuclear weapons. It comes after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attacked Iran for violation of United Nations (UN) resolutions this week.

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) document, many Iranian officials have been in clandestine talks with Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship over nuclear weapons policy.

In exchange for obtaining military, nuclear and missile equipment, the Iranian regime sends oil to North Korea, the explosive paper claims.

It reads: “The Iranian regime is North Korea’s strategic ally.

“Many of the regime’s current officials, including Khamenei, current President Hassan Rouhani, and Mohsen Rezai, the former Commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have all travelled to North Korea to discuss the nuclear programme.”

Iran and North Korea are cooperating on nuclear weapons, an NCRI document has claimed (Image: GETTY)

Missile and nuclear experts from North Korea have had a consistent presence in Iran since the Iran-Iraq war, the NCRI paper states.

The document, entitled ‘Iran’s Ballistic Buildup: The march towards nuclear-capable missiles’, purports to know the “exact location of the place where North Koreans stay”, contending it is: “End of Babaie Highway heading to the east, past Morvarid Hall, at Khomeini complex.”

It also mentions specific individuals whom it claims are involved.

According to compiled reports, IRGC delegates and commanders regularly visit North Korea, with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh allegedly present during the third nuclear test conducted by North Korea on February 12, 2013.

Mike Pompeo recently called out Iran on its nuclear weapons policy (Image: GETTY)

The document continues to implicate Fakhrizadeh, saying during his North Korea visit he stayed at Hotel Koryo – considered to be one of the most luxurious establishments in the city of Pyongyang.

Of his group’s revelations, NCRI representative Hossein Abedini told Express.co.uk: “The ballistic missile programme has always been a part of the Iranian regime’s malign and destructive regional policy.

“It constitutes one of the pillars of the regime to guarantee the survival of the theocratic dictatorship.”

The regime change champion added: “The regime has squandered enormous sums from Iran’s wealth to invest in its missile programme during the recent years in the context of its warmongering and destabilising policies in the region.

”The NCRI identified and exposed the location of 42 IRGC centres across Iran involved in the manufacturing, testing and launching of ballistic missiles.

”These ballistic missiles are largely based on North Korean design and model.”

An Iranian surface-to-surface Qiam-1 (Rising) missile (Image: GETTY)

The NCRI disclosures come after the UK spoke to criticise Rouhani’s Iranian regime at the UN Security Council this week along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The UK’s UN ambassador Karen Pierce said: “Iran needs to take steps to address the concerns of this Council seriously and to recognise that its expeditionary and expansionist security doctrine will only provoke more challenges and lead to greater instability within the region.”

Meanwhile, Mr Pompeo urged the UN to ban Iranian missile tests.

He said: “Iran has exploited the goodwill of nations and defied multiple Security Council resolutions in its quest for a robust ballistic missile force.

Hassan Rouhani is the current president of Iran (Image: GETTY)

“The United States will never stand for this.

“No nation that seeks peace and prosperity in the Middle East should either.”

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – or so-called Iran Nuclear deal – was intended to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons programme and thwart its ability to create a nuclear bomb.

The accord was struck between Iran and global superpowers, China, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States (who later withdrew under President Trump).

Of the deal, Mr Abedini said: “It gave a lot of unnecessary concessions to the regime, which was in a very weak position.

“It was time to get rid of all its nuclear activities but unfortunately they gave a lot of concessions which did not work and made the regime more brazen.”